When I look at an image on my camera LCD display, I can guaranteee the colours are always better there than they are once I get it off it, either onto my photo back up drive or onto my macbook or my PC, so many times I've been disappointed with the image once i've got it off the camera, and had to do more work in Lightroom(3) than ever imagined to get it where it was on the camera in the first place..what am I missing here!? I have a Huey pro screen calibrator too

The in-camera file is a JPEG, which has had all the colour, saturation and vibrance adjustments made to it.

The RAW file will always look flat and drab, until you sort the colour etc. I quite often use the inbuilt presets (Camera Vivid on my D90) from LR during import, which gets me somewhere towards the right colours, then fine tune.

The in-camera presets on LR are in the camera calibration section (I think - at work so no LR to check).

Hopefully I'm on the right track, if not, I blame last nights excesses!

Hi Sean, ah you might be on the right track, yes I'm shooting RAW only, so you say the image on the camera I see is a temp jpg image? I think I have vivid still on my camera settings, so if I did vivid in the import window on LR then you reckon it might be closer to what I see, sounds right?...I think!?

...gotta get these pics right, they mean so much to me, and a bit cheesed off with how they look now in LR

I am confused about how you get the camera presets into LR? In the Develop mode under camera calibration area there is only ACR 4.6 in my drop down menu.

In the Import Photos menu under "Information to Apply -> Develop Settings: there is only a bunch of general presets.
Did you have to download a profile for the D90 from somewhere and add it into your lightroom as an add on feature?

I thought these were the ones he meant, I used an "ageing" one by mistake once, I was hoping there may be a vivid one there

That would make even more sense, lets hope so, thanks for helping to clarify Mike

...I've just put the question to Nikon suppport too

You have to download and install them. Then they will appear in the calibration dropdown in Develop module. From there you can create your own preset with just this setting applied and have it auto applied when you import.

I have never used Lightroom, but use PhotoMechanic, so please forgive my ignorance. This sounds like it could be a common color management issue. Your in-camera color space may be set differently from your default color space in the software you are using. For example, your camera may be set to Adobe color, while Lightroom is displaying your images in sRGB color (or vice versa). If this is the case, it could explain your situation. I hope this helps.

Duncan, thats cool, thanks so much, I got the basic vivid one installed but the video on how to install the NIkon ones isnt working http://lightroomkill...alling-presets/the files are there but not sure how to install them, can you help?

Thanks Bentoni, thats on the same wavelentgh thanks.

I got a reply from Nikon, saying all they can recommend is use their software!